Kevin Costner quotes: the millionaire actor talks about being wanted, figuring out what you want, sex, regrets, and more.
“You have to decide if you’re going to wilt like a daisy or if you’re just going to go forward and live the life that you’ve been granted.”
“You’re just as good, and if you work harder, you can be better and you can be more than you think you can.”
“You can be as you choose to be. It’s an act of discipline sometimes, but it can be done.”
“You’re this rat in the American maze, working your way towards the cheese, which is a job.”
“If you want a job, and you’re not as good as the next guy, then work longer than the next guy. Work faster. Be there before him – because talented people show up late, and sometimes sh*t needs to get done.”
“I’m a big fan of dreams. Unfortunately, dreams are our first casualty in life – people seem to give them up, quicker than anything, for a ‘reality.'”
“I dream of big things. I work for the small things. If you’re going to dream, you might as well dream big.”
“I think one of the first things to go as people’s lives start to go down, is their dreams. Dreams should be the last thing to go – dreams are the things you go down with. If you’re left clinging to a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean, I’d put on it the word dreams.”
“When a defining moment comes along, you define the moment, or the moment defines you.”
“If you don’t understand your limitations you won’t achieve much in your life.”
“I haven’t tried to buffer myself. I like rolling the dice.”
“I’ve never had that fear of going against the grain.”
“Failure doesn’t kill you. It increases your desire to make something happen.”
“I’ve always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience.”
“I just tried to build on my failures.”
“I have taken blows. I have had high moments. But I don’t think the blows have ever hardened me. My enthusiasms are still big.”
“A good idea is something like an emotion, you just can’t keep it in.”
“Sometimes we worry about the things that you know that matter the least and don’t focus on the things that matter the most.”
“I don’t give up. I’m a plodder. People come and go, but I stay the course.”
“What is it you want? That’s a question that we all get posed; sometimes internally and sometimes externally.”
“Sometimes it takes a partner to say, ‘What is it you want?’ Because I think we operate in life and sometimes we don’t know. We’re all in some kind of maze going after the cheese at the end, and we get it and we go, ‘What is it that we want?'”
“You can spend your life trying to be popular, but that’s a tricky business. You can also just try to be true to yourself.”
“We stand our best chance of leaving a legacy to those who want to learn, our children, by standing firm. In matters of style, hey, swim with the stream. But in matters of principle, you need to stand like a rock.”
“There’s nothing more noble than a father and mother making an opportunity for their child, knowing that their life is gonna be hard. There’s something incredibly heroic about that.”
“Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win in the end because they’ve stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.”
“Broken people say awful things and do incredibly absurd things.”
“If you’re willing to tell somebody that you love them, are you also willing to say you’re sorry? You need to, even when you think you’re in the right.”
“Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you’re not good at them.”
“I like the fat in life, not just the lean storytelling. I think the fat gets you through the winter. I love subplot. I love extra rabbit holes you can go down. Sometimes, if we give things time, they reveal themselves to us.”
“Westerns aren’t about the gunfight, even though it has to be there at one point. It’s not what they’re about, at least the good ones. It’s about the drama. It’s about the resourcefulness of men and women.”
“You have to pick the stories that you want to be involved with and the end game is you’d like to be a part of a hit. But I think your moral obligation is to follow your own heart.”
“I work for the public, for the people who are paying to go to the cinema, rather than for the critics.”
“Life’s better when it’s fun. Boy, that’s deep, isn’t it?”
“Money isn’t a major motivating force in my life. Nor is my profession. There are other things that I care more about than being an actor.”
“I know I have this level of celebrity, of fame, international, national, whatever you want to call it, but it’s a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you’re in the middle of another famous person’s life and you think to yourself, ‘How the hell did I get famous? What is this, some weird club that we’re in?'”
“It’s nice to be wanted. That’s a really good feeling. I’m not immune to it.”
“It’s nice to be wanted in almost any capacity.”
“It’s such a cool thing in life to get what it is you want. Most of the time we don’t, but occasionally we do.”
“I feel like I’ve been able to live a dream life, but my view of things is absolutely inside behavior about how I behave and how I count on other people behaving.”
“I don’t have a seller’s remorse about how I’ve lived. I am cognizant of what I have done, and any of us could maybe draw the line better. But I’ve tried to live pretty fearlessly.”
“I think I’m a pretty right down the middle guy. I just think that’s kind of who I am. I’m not afraid of my own journey.”
“I haven’t lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that’s from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them.”
“I know what I know and it’s not enough. I know that when I die, I’m going to miss a lot of great books and a lot of great music that I’ll never hear. I’m going to miss seeing my children’s children. I’ll miss boyfriends and husbands who I’m going to be absolutely dependent on to treat my children with respect and grace, and take care of them and honor them. That’s what I’m going to miss.”
If you want to read more quotes like Costner’s, try Tom Hanks’ tips next.
